from the urls-we-dig-up dept

TANSTAAFL is usually true, especially if you're counting opportunity costs. However, some deals are too attractive for some people to pass up -- especially offers of free food. Occasionally, folks even get the better end of the deal by exploiting loopholes, and the "free lunch" turns out to really favor the eater. Here are just a few examples of getting some free food (with an asterisk).

from the you-spelled-'taking'-wrong dept

Sharing is a universal concept. Or so you would think. But even a three year-old has a better grasp on the concept of sharing than Amtrak does.

An Amtrak passenger uploaded a photo taken from an Amtrak car to Instagram and tagged the company. The company's Twitter account responded, asking the passenger if he'd mind "sharing" the photo with Amtrak.

btw, I don't mind *giving* you this photo, but you shouldn't use the word "share" when you mean "permanently assign copyright"

You see, when Amtrak says "share," it actually means "take your stuff and never give it back." When this Twitter user "shared" this with Amtrak (via social media management platform Percolate/Fanbranded), he gave up everything.

Here's the Terms and Agreement verbiage Amtrak translates as "sharing."

This Photograph Copyright Assignment Agreement ("Agreement") is entered into by and between the National Railroad Passenger Corporation ("Amtrak"), a corporation organized under 49 U.S.C. §24101 et seq. and the laws of the District of Columbia, with its principal office located at 60 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E, Washington, DC 20002 and Photographer for the assignment of the copyright in the photograph(s) ("Photographs"), which are attached to this Agreement as Exhibit I.

Grant of Rights

Photographer does hereby grant, assign and transfer all right, title and interest in the Photographs to Amtrak and any registrations and copyright applications relating thereto, including any renewals and extensions thereof. Photographer agrees to execute all papers and to perform such other proper acts, as Amtrak may deem necessary or desirable to secure for Amtrak the rights herein granted, assigned and/or transferred.

Attribution

Amtrak may, but is not required to, identify and credit Photographer and Amtrak may use or authorize the use of Photographer’s name, likeness or pertinent biographical material in connection with the advertising and promotion of any work containing all or part of the Photographs.

Entire Agreement, Modifications and Governing Law

This Agreement constitutes the entire agreement and understanding between the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof and supersedes any prior discussion or agreements between them relating thereto. No modification or amendment to this Agreement shall be valid unless in writing and signed by both parties. This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the substantive laws, but not the laws of conflicts, of the District of Columbia.

The short version:

Sharing = giving away your photo for forever for exploitation solely by Amtrak, which may or may not choose to credit you for your creation and either way, you can't really demand attribution because it's no longer your photo, is it?

Is it forgivable? In a word, NO. While we can expect most corporate entities to have their way with user-generated content, the most anyone should ask for is non-exclusive rights. Amtrak has no right to demand this and everyone greeted with this offer to "share" should turn it down with a hearty, "go screw yourself."

But this isn't Amtrak's only dip into re-purposing the creations of others into rolling PR platforms (literally). A few months ago, it sent out the call to aspiring writers, offering finalists a free ticket to the place of their choosing provided they rode there in an Amtrak rail car and wrote something suitably inspiring.

Every aspiring writer who thought viewing up to $900 of the country by rail would beat back writer's block signed up, forcing Amtrak to end its open call for submissions much earlier than it planned to. Enthusiasm outweighed common sense as every submission (over 11,000 of them) became the property of Amtrak, subject to a whole host of stipulations.

In submitting an Application, Applicant hereby grants Sponsor the absolute, worldwide, and irrevocable right to use, modify, publish, publicly display, distribute, and copy Applicant’s Application, in whole or in part, for any purpose, including, but not limited to, advertising and marketing, and to sublicense such rights to any third parties. In addition, Applicant hereby represents that he/she has obtained the necessary rights from any persons identified in the Application (if any persons are minors, then the written consent of and grant from the minor’s parent or legal guardian); and, Applicant grants Sponsor the absolute, worldwide, and irrevocable right to use, modify, publish, publicly display, distribute, and copy the name, image, and/or likeness of Applicant and the names of any such persons identified in the Application for any purpose, including, but not limited to, advertising and marketing.

If Amtrak was looking for a bunch of free marketing material written by a cast of thousands, it found it. And then, it stripped away any rights the authors had to their creations, even if they weren't one of the 24 finalists. Amtrak isn't looking for talented, original writers. It's looking for some really cheap spokespeople.

The Amtrak Residency’s terms and conditions, which prescribe a search for publicists, not the next great American novelist. Applications and writing samples that pass an initial evaluation will then be judged by a panel “based on the degree to which the Applicant would function as an effective spokesperson/endorser of [the] Amtrak brand.”

Amtrak really needs a refresher course on sharing. Companies can be partners with creators but far too often, they seek complete control. Notably, everything defining this stripping of the creators' rights happens in the fine print. If you assume the worst about Terms and Conditions, you'll rarely be disappointed. But it takes a certain blend of audacity and forced cheerfulness to use the word "share" to describe what's going on here.

from the all-new-questions dept

Roughly a year ago, Nintendo began a bold plan of declaring war on well-known YouTubers who created "let's play" videos using Nintendo IP. Well, perhaps war isn't the right word. Suddenly and swiftly, it claimed these YouTube videos through the site's system that then allowed it to push ads into the videos, the revenue for which it shared between YouTube and itself, leaving the videomakers out in the cold. It was misguided in several ways, the most obvious being that these kinds of videos and their creators are essentially free advertising for Nintendo, getting the word out to potential customers about games they may then pick up. It strains the mind to think of any large numbers of people who might substitute a "let's play" video for actually playing the game themselves, but Nintendo is Nintendo, so the company opted for control over goodwill.

Nintendo's statement came from a series of messages on its Japanese Twitter account that mentioned "several affiliate programs" for YouTube users that would allow them to "receive a portion of the advertising revenue" coming from videos featuring gameplay footage. I reached out to the company for additional information, and here's what a representative from Nintendo of America had to say:

"Nintendo has been permitting the use of Nintendo copyrighted material in videos on YouTube under appropriate circumstances. Advertisements may accompany those videos, and in keeping with previous policy that revenue is shared between YouTube and Nintendo. In addition, for those who wish to use the material more proactively, we are preparing an affiliate program in which a portion of the advertising profit is given to the creator. Details about this affiliate program will be announced in the future."

On the surface, this seems like a huge step in the right direction. The once monolithic stance on collecting all the revenue possible from these videos is finally giving way to a program that will allow some of the fan-gathering YouTube personalities to have some skin in the game. You'd think there would be praise across the board for this. You'd be wrong. Between the ill-feelings still lingering from the actions of last year and the wariness of working under the umbrella of a Nintendo affiliate program, some of the bigger names seem suspicious in this phase where details are still lacking on the program.

Zack Scott, another popular YouTuber and the one who first brought the issue to light last year after he noticed that some of the Nintendo-focused videos on his popular ZackScottGames channel were being tagged with the network's Content ID system, told Kotaku at the end of last June that he had resumed posting such work once Nintendo appeared to back away from its crackdown. I followed up with him today to see if anything had changed since his tentative return to posting Nintendo-centric "Let's Play" videos last year. He said that while he's been impacted "very, very minimally" by any changes in Nintendo and YouTube's policies so far, he could "definitely see a future" where this has a bigger influence.

"I feel the relationship between video creator and content publisher is mutually beneficial," Scott wrote in an email. "Numerous companies already understand this balance. I'd hate for the model to become where a popular creator can request revenue of a publisher in exchange for coverage. I'd equally hate for a publisher to request revenue of a creator in exchange for access."

Left unsaid is the converse: will Nintendo use its affiliate program to attempt to exert control over YouTubers' video content. Keep in mind that the Nintendo IP on display isn't really the draw in these videos. After all, there are a million such videos for a million games. The popular ones are popular because of the personality of the YouTuber. They share the stage with the game and they got their audience on a ledger of trust from the viewers. If Nintendo attempts to leverage that trust by exerting control through its affiliate program, such as by only allowing access to content in exchange for positive or non-negative editorial speech within the video, it will be a massive problem, one that will ultimately backfire in Nintendo's face, while torpedoing a bunch of YouTube personalities along with it.

Either way, the devil is most definitely in the details with this kind of program. If Nintendo makes it extremely clear that editorial content is hands-off and that the affiliate program will be free from YouTuber corruption, this might, possibly work. Given the company's history, however, I have my doubts.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Advertising is a difficult business. Companies want to make people aware of their products, but not everyone wants to be bombarded by various offers for products that they might not want or need. For consumer goods, it's sometimes possible to avoid being annoying by making ads that are amusing -- so the audience at least gets a laugh or some entertainment value out of the experience. Here are just a few examples of promotional campaigns that might be somewhat humorous.

from the self-hacking? dept

[Update: hole has been closed by ACB's IT team]

The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is so severely flawed that people are extremely hesitant to report security holes in websites, especially after witnessing what happened to Weev (Andrew Auernheimer), who went to jail for exposing a flaw in AT&T's site that exposed user info when values in the URL were incremented.

"I remember a person was recently arrested for finding this same flaw in a website and told (at&t/apple??) about it. He was arrested and jailed if I remember right. This is the type of chilling effects that come when people view techies as hackers and are arrested for pointing out flaws.

Is that overdramatic? Doubtful. People have reported security flaws to companies only to have these entities press charges, file lawsuits or otherwise tell them to shut up. Weev's only out because the government's case was brought in the wrong venue. The CFAA, which has been used to punish many helpful people, is still intact and as awful as ever.

As the (also anonymous) redditor points out, he or she has tried to contact the company but has found no avenue to address this security hole which exposes names, addresses and email addresses of customers sending in claims for a free year of Netflix streaming that came bundled with their purchase of an LG Smart TV. Incrementing the digits at the end of the URL brings up other claims, some with images of receipts attached. In addition, anyone can upload support documents to these claims.

Here's a screenshot of the hole in question:

As the original poster points out, with a little coding, someone could put together a database of addresses that most likely house a brand new LG Smart TV. And this may not just be limited to LG. ACB Incentives is the company behind this promotion, and it handles the same sort of online rebate forms for a variety of companies. These rebate submission sites all branch off acbincentives.com, which could mean it's just a matter of figuring out how each one handles submitted claims, URL-wise.

Now, I've contacted the company to let them know. Amanda Phelps at the Memphis branch says she's bringing it to the attention of programming. I also let her know that it may affect other rebate pages but that I can't confirm that. We'll see how quickly this is closed*, but all in all, the people at ACB seemed to be concerned and helpful, rather than suspcious.

*Very quickly, it appears. See note at top of post.

But the underlying point remains. Many people who discover these flaws aren't criminals and aren't looking to expose the data of thousands of unsuspecting users. They're simply concerned that this is happening and often incredulous that major companies would be this careless with customers' data. That the kneejerk reaction has often been to shoot the messenger definitely gives those discovering these holes second thoughts as to reporting them, a hesitation that could allow someone with more nefarious aims to exploit the exposed data. The law needs to change, and so does the attitude that anyone discovering a flaw must be some sort of evil hacker -- or that the entity must do whatever it takes, even if it means throwing the CFAA at someone, just to prevent a little embarrassment.

from the idle-hands dept

I'm not sure if you heard, but the United States government has been shut down, or has been "slimmed down," or is partially funded, or whatever some talking noggin on your favorite cable news network has told you this news cycle. Terror is being expressed, much talk has been made over the dire consequences, and everyone is looking for someone to blame as our government pulls its latest hissy-fit slap-fight instead of being productive. Yay, democracy. Anyway, the result is a great many furloughed government employees with their retroactive pay guaranteed and a whole lot of self-reflection time on their hands.

No worries, because retro-gaming website Good Old Games is here to help. They've decided to make the further assclown-ery of our esteemed elected lizard-people a sort of theme for their latest publicity stunt. They're going halvsies with customers on game titles like Capitalism 2 and Theme Hospital. But the deal is even better if you're one of those furloughed folks on the government teet.

Finally, we would like to express our condolences to everyone who's been furloughed by the shutdown. More than that, actually, we'd like to offer you the games pack of our special Shutdown Promo for free. Send an email to thanksobama@gog.com with your picture holding the official furlough letter you received, before Friday 11 October 2013 at 12:00 EDT and we'll give you The Guild: Gold Edition, Capitalism, Capitalism 2, Tropico: Gold Edition, Alpha Centauri + Alien Crossfire, Theme Hospital, and Redneck Rampage free.

GOG, which has experimented with some forward-thinking promotions in the past, really knows how to turn government ineptitude into an opportunity. Yes, this is an obvious publicity stunt. Yes, I'm helping that stunt by writing this article. But I don't care, because the prospect of government employees essentially getting retroactively paid to play games based on healthcare, government, and capitalism, all of which they're getting for free, is the kind of recursive irony that tastes as good as a cut of prime rib.

So if you're sitting at home because our two party system has melted into a massive talking-points circle-jerk, pass the time by playing some games for free. And know that we Americans all appreciate the work you aren't doing thanks to the weirdos we all sent to Washington.

from the just-gtfo dept

By now you should be familiar with the concept of advertising being content and content being advertising. If you're new to the class, the idea is that clever, timely, and wanted ads can be every bit as entertaining and drawing as entertainment content itself. It's essentially what makes a good ad: something you want being presented in the way you want it, all without pissing you or a large section of the customer off base. Oreo serves as a wonderful example of this, having put out a timely Twitter quip as an ad in last year's Super Bowl.

If you're a female customer who goes to Drew's Pizzeria in Champaign, you can apparently flash your boobs and walk away with some free pizza. Since sober girls usually won't flash people for free pizza, it seems that these boobs-for-pizza trades unsurprisingly happen more often at night, according to a Craigslist post.

Drew's Pizzeria's Twitter account, now deleted in an attempt to bury its head in the internet sand, offered such wonderful incentives to eat their pie as:

"FREE PIZZA for the next pair of nips right now, ladies only!"

"Pizzas $5 right at Drews or free for titties."

"WE WANT MORE TITS!!! #showusyourtits #uiuc FREE PIZZA"

Now, we have a couple of problems here. First, while you won't find a guy with a deeper appreciation of the female anatomy than I, screaming how much you want to see boobs at your pizzeria using the all-caps faux pas is akin to the creepy guy in the corner of the strip club who keeps asking one stripper exactly what time she'd be leaving out the back and whether she's allergic to ether. And who didn't see the eventual backlash coming? Large swaths of men may think of free-spirited ho-bags when the term "college girl" is uttered, but that's bullshit. College is also the place where feminism spreads, where activism finds roots, and where the love of battling a corporation is second only to a love of a cancelled class. Of course people rallied against these idiots.

But, hey, they cancelled their Twitter account, so they're clearly sorry. I imagine we'll get a claim of a hack by the Syrian Electronic Army any moment now. In the meantime, there has to be a better-behaved business that will sell you some pizza in rural Illinois.

from the oops dept

You may recall EMI / Capitol Records ongoing lawsuit against MP3Tunes and its founder/CEO Michael Robertson. The initial ruling in that case went almost entirely against EMI, with one small exception that we'll get to soon. EMI asked the court to reconsider the ruling, claiming that it had made some mistakes, but the court slammed EMI for some questionable behavior, including taking a number of quotes completely out of context as an attempt to mislead the court. The latest on that case is that following the appeals court ruling in the YouTube/Viacom case that sent that case back to the lower court, EMI pretended that the ruling changed everything and required a new ruling. The two sides are currently filing motions back and forth over that, with MP3Tunes pointing out that nothing in that ruling actually changes anything, and EMI claiming otherwise. Given the narrow aspects of the Viacom ruling, I think that EMI is still unlikely to get very far. Still, it's fairly amazing how much time, money and effort it has spent on this case, even as the company itself got into serious trouble and was sold off in, effectively, a fire sale.

Which then brings us to the other aspect of the case. The one area in which EMI "prevailed" in the original case was in the part they filed against Robertson personally. The court had ruled on summary judgment that Robertson was liable directly for 47 songs that he had personally "sideloaded" into MP3Tunes. However, even that part of the case was strange. Initially, EMI had claimed that it had never, ever, ever authorized any MP3s to be given out for free for promotional purposes. In response, Robertson crowdsourced examples of over 1,400 cases where EMI was clearly giving away MP3s for free. However, the court still ruled that he was liable.

In the latest filing about that, Robertson hits back on a number of points, starting with the fact that the court ruled on summary judgment on the issue, even though EMI and Robertson had already agreed that the summary judgment part of the dispute wouldn't cover Robertson's personal liability. Because of that, he didn't present the full argument for why he shouldn't be liable, and thus he's asking that the court allow that part to go to trial in order to show that the evidence of his own infringement is lacking.

In order to support that, Robertson's filing demonstrates a few important things. First, it shows a bunch of evidence that EMI purposefully and deliberately marketed its music to various sites asking them to give away MP3s and even to share the music widely. Second, it shows that, despite being asked for this info during discovery, EMI did not provide it. Instead, Robertson got it later from other sources. This is a big no-no, and EMI may run into some issues for failing to hand over the required information during discovery. Still, what the filing shows is that EMI regularly and frequently hired companies to distribute MP3s for free, and encouraged them to be put up on various websites and shared widely. And this includes some of the songs that Robertson is accused of infringing and some of the sites he's accused of downloading the songs from.

Reading pages five through nine in the motion he filed demonstrates this over and over again, including in an email from an EMI Publishing employee, who not only is planning a promotional download but says part of the plan is to "encourage as many third party online zines, podcasts, blogs, major web portals to host the MP3 for free download on their site." Here's just a snippet of some of the examples Robertson turned up of EMI using free MP3s in marketing (which they did not properly disclose):

For example, Definitive Jux (an EMI label) entered into an agreement with viral
marketing firm, Better Propaganda, which granted Better Propaganda the right "to use, copy,
distribute, display and perform [a specified song] on and through the Internet and the World
Wide Web..."). This song remains available on the Better
Propaganda site. Plaintiffs did not produce this document....

Similarly, Astralwerks (another EMI label) engaged Toolshed, Inc. ("Toolshed"), a Viral
marketing firm, to distribute sound recordings pursuant to a marketing program by which
Toolshed would virally distribute free MP3 downloads through various blogs and Toolshed's
own website. Importantly, Toolshed's webpage for downloads notes clearly that "All songs
. . . are pre-licensed for use on your site. Simply browse, find music you like, and copy it to
your page." .... Toolshed has done projects for
numerous labels, including EMI labels Astralwerks, Capitol Records, Caroline Records and
Definitive Jux Toolshed distributed free MP3s for numerous of Plaintiffs' artists --
including Air, Willy Mason, Bat for Lashes, Pacificl, Carbon/Silicon, The Perceptionists, and
Amos Lee -- including one of the same artists that Robertson is accused of wrongfully
sideloading.... Plaintiffs
did not produce documents they exchanged with Toolshed relating to those projects.

One project by Toolshed is especially important: as emails (dated March 5, 2007)
provided to Robertson from Toolshed indicate, Astralwerks paid Toolshed to get websites to give
away MP3s for the new release of the album "Pocket Symphony" by Air, to be released on
March 6, 2007.... Toolshed achieved coverage, including free downloads
of a track and/or video placement, with numerous sites, including 3HiVe, Donewaiting, Kevchino, Music for Kids Who Can't Read Good, Muzzle of Bees, PopMatters, Sixeyes, Stereogum, Antville, and Kingbline..., some of the same sites and the same artist from which Robertson is accused of wrongfully downloading Plaintiffs' songs and which Plaintiffs have alleged are unauthorized sources of MP3's.... Plaintiffs did not produce such documents.

In many ways, this is reminiscent of the whole Dajaz1 situation, in which the lawyers are insisting that the distribution on various blogs is infringing, at the very same time that their marketing people are begging those same sites to offer up the songs as a promotion.

Separate from all of this, but in the same filing, Robertson hits back on the claims that the use of cover art in MP3Tunes infringed. The filing notes that MP3Tunes had licensed all the cover art from Amazon and that EMI never even bother to show that it held the copyright in the cover art. All they showed was that the company had copyrights in the songs, but that's different from the cover art (and made more complicated by the fact that the copyright in the cover art might belong to the artists who created the art, rather than EMI).

All in all, the filing reinforces what's already come out in the earlier rulings: which is that EMI seems to have an incredibly weak case here, but due to what appears to be a random infatuation with going after Robertson personally, is just throwing everything it can at him.

from the well,-look-at-that... dept

Popular author Tim Ferriss got some attention recently when his latest book, The 4-Hour Chef, was published by Amazon, with a big push to try to make it a best seller (the first Amazon published book to get such a push, apparently). This scared off Barnes & Noble who refused to sell the book, because, apparently, it's run by childish and petulant execs. Ferriss, who is known for his rather extreme ability to market the hell out of anything, has actually been using this to his own advantage, continually calling out the fact that Barnes & Noble is refusing to carry the book, and using non-standard promotion techniques, including having the book sold via Panera restaurants and... doing a big promotion deal with BitTorrent. To be honest, I found some of the language used to promote that deal a bit misleading, as it appeared some people thought he was distributing the book itself via BitTorrent. Instead, he teamed up with the company to distribute "an exclusive bundle" of extra, related, content. That's still cool, but having watched some of the hype behind it, you could see how some might see it as bait and switch.

For instance, BitTorrent conversion is NUTS. Of 210,000 downloads (of this bundle) earlier this week, more than 85,000 clicked through “Support the Author” to the book’s Amazon page. We all had to triple and quadruple check that to believe it.

Now, of course, not everyone who clicks will buy -- and he admits that as well. But, that's still an extra 85,000 people going to the Amazon page. Some of them are likely to buy.

Even at a 1% conversion after clicking an effective “buy now” link, that translates to 850 books… and BitTorrent is only accelerating. Wow.

But BitTorrent is only for pirates and only hurts authors and artists, right?

from the neat-ideas dept

We recently wrote about a new feature from Songkick, called Detour, that can be used to crowdsource a concert to guarantee for a performer that it's worth going to a show there. Songkick now has another example, which is even more interesting. This one isn't just about pre-proving a profitable demand level for a show, but about engaging with fans, finding new fans and really getting people engaged. It involved the band Hot Chip, who had an open day in their European tour, and was hoping to use it to play a "smaller" town -- one that many tours for similarly popular bands were bypassing. Songkick found 3 towns that the band hadn't headlined before -- and then let the three towns compete. What's interesting is how people in one town -- Folkestone -- went above and beyond to make it happen:

What happened next though was incredibly exciting. A bunch of superfans in Folkestone decided that they were going to make it happen. As one fan said, "Most bands don't come to this part of Kent, they tend to stop at London." They got super proactive and started to email all their friends and even petitioned the local radio station and newspaper. It exploded and went completely viral in a matter of hours through fan to fan word of mouth marketing, Hot Chip sold out. Check out the sales curve of pledges for the show, the huge viral spike is when fans started to self-organise.

Songkick has some interesting data points:

Some interesting things we learned:
- 70% of the people who pledged had never seen Hot Chip before. Detour is really creating new fan to artist connections.
- 66% of the attendees found out about the show through their friends (The rest from Songkick and Hot Chip)
- 1 (amazing) fan emailed over 2000 people they knew to try and spread the word.

In other words, such a platform isn't just about fans getting an act to show up somewhere, but also about getting fans to spread the word, to evangelize and to help build the fanbase much bigger. One thing we've definitely noticed about successful crowdsourcing campaigns is that they tend to create a sense of "ownership," which means that supporters have incentive to get their friends to support things too, which is a different form of "viral" marketing. Songkick notes, also, how far fans will go to support acts they like:

I think the thing that really blew me away was the level of self-organisation amongst fans. In a world where half the music industry is still focused on complaining about file sharing, people often forget that fan is short for fanatic. Hot Chip's fans are incredibly passionate about them and figured out a way to self-organise to make this show happen

Now, there is one caveat that Songkick doesn't mention that could be worth exploring as well. While it is great for those in and around Folkestone, does it upset those in Stoke or in York who are fans, but who didn't "win?" It seems possible, though hopefully they went into this understanding that was a possibility. Either way, we see that doing these kinds of things isn't just about pleasing existing fans, but finding more fans as well.